Judge: Daley doesn't have to testify in Burge torture case

Former Mayor Richard Daley won't have to testify at a hearing next month for a longtime inmate who alleges he was tortured into confessing to a 1982 rape, a Cook County judge ruled Wednesday.

Attorneys for Stanley Wrice wanted to call Daley to testify about his knowledge of allegations of torture under disgraced former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge while Daley was state's attorney in the 1980s. Wrice, 59, is seeking to overturn his conviction for taking part in the gang rape of a woman, saying he falsely confessed after being tortured by two detectives working under Burge.

Judge Richard Walsh said Wrice had failed to show how calling Daley would bolster his claim that officials had knowledge of police torture and allowed it to continue.

At least twice in the past, judges have ordered the former mayor to answer questions as part of lawsuits brought by Burge accusers, but both times the city settled the cases before Daley had to testify about what he might know about the scandal.

Wrice's attorneys had relied on a letter sent to Daley in 1982 when he was state's attorney in which then-Chicago police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek raised concerns about how another defendant, Andrew Wilson, showed signs of being tortured by police.

But Walsh said nothing in the letter substantiated Wrice's claim and that it would be nothing but a "fishing expedition" for Daley to take the witness stand.

"Where is it anywhere that (Daley) was aware that Burge and company were torturing people?" Walsh said. "It doesn't say, 'Hey Richie Daley, your boys on the Southeast Side are torturing people.'"

One of Wrice's attorneys, Jennifer Bonjean, said she plans to appeal the judge's ruling. She said there had been no objections when she subpoenaed Daley and noted that Judge Evelyn Clay had ordered a full evidentiary hearing before she recused herself from the case.

"It wasn't until Mayor Daley received the subpoena that the whole thing shifted," Bonjean said. "It's a legitimate theory we just had yanked away."

Burge is serving a 41/2-year sentence in federal prison for a 2010 perjury conviction for denying under oath any knowledge of torture of criminal suspects.